Ace Bushy Striptease

What We're Up To

Ace Bushy Striptease are stopping being a band. I (jez) wrote this statement last week to try and explain this. I hope it gets somewhere close:

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Trying to describe the end. I’m trying to describe the end. Trying to describe it in such a way that doesn’t sell short those few who genuinely care, whilst being honest about the grief that is encompassed in that official line: ‘personal differences.’ Grief: it’s a break-up. We’re breaking up. It’s a break up of five people, of five best friends. I think ‘grief’ is appropriate.

It’s a grey Wednesday morning ten days away from our album release, album number 6, Slurpt. As we ratchet through the formalities a dull sense of familiarity rears its head. The familiarity of silence. Another record we think is our best about to paddle out into the void, where it will float, float on, barely noticed, the dingey deflating as it bumps alongside the great steamers and cruise liners more suited to the ocean waves. And this time there’ll be nothingto follow it. It will slip away and soon we won’t be able to see its dull yellow and it will drift over the horizon and that will be that.

We’ve been having a bit of a shit time, truth be told. For about six months. In that period we tried to make everything work again, we really did. It was a battle on a couple of fronts, involving some things that were really way more important than the band between members of the band and after a tentative moment of hope (we had a practice and wrote two new songs in May), the situation worsened and became untenable. It is absolutely the right decision. Please ask members individually if you feel short-changed by that explanation. In respect to my bandmates’ privacy I think it would be unfair to go further here.

Looking back, or forcing myself to look back for the purpose of this self-righteous exit, a strange patchwork of memories spiral through my mind. The early years of careering down the A38 with the volume up and the windows down to some gig or other. Salt Pepper N Spinderella. The elation of someone slightly moving their hips to a song. Michael Kightly hearing Michael Kightly Is Pretty Rad on the BBC. Mervyn and Isaac Find A CD somehow ending up on a Best Of 2008 torrent, sandwiched by Arcade Fire and Beach House, and thus finding itself on the playlist of thousands across the world. That raw sense of believing you’re onto something great. To now. Or recently, anyway. The perfect line-up. The tours. The amazing friends, promoters, bands we’ve met. An amazing DIY label who gets told off for talking about you too much. A place to record where we felt loved. Spooning in a strange city. Nursing eachother through the drops. The Middle Ones. Durham. Cher Lloyd. Serge.

If you think this is overly earnest and self-important you’re probably right. We’re nothing, were nothing and will continue to be nothing. But we made eachother believe we’re something. I’m bitter because I think we’re brilliant and no-one else does. I’m bitter because I’m a flawed jealous individual who looks at other bands and what they do and how they do it and thinks, that should be us, up there. But you know why? Because I think my bandmates are incredible songwriters and their creativity and imagination is inspiring.I thinkthe songs they’ve written are wonderful and I think what we did was genuinely different and unique for the seven years of our existence.

I’m proud we did things as a band in a way that is ethically sound from our first practice to our last. I’m forever grateful I was in a band with my favourite bassist and guitarists and singer in the world. And I’m devastated it has had to end. But it has. And it had to.

Our album is out a week today so we’ve put it up for streaming if you fancy listening to it in full before it’s released. We are really proud of it so if you could give it a chance then that’d be grand.

Let’s slip this into the noise. Here’s track one of our new album Slurpt. It was the first song to be written for it, way back on Christmas Eve of 2012, and has been intermittently propping up sets ever since. I was going to do an earnest explanatory note but on reflection think it’s pretty self-explanatory.

This is Ibiza Rocks, and it’s is the first single from the new Ace Bushy Striptease album, Slurpt, released 30th June on Odd Box Records. You can pre-order the album here - http://oddboxrecords.bandcamp.com/releases